Job 4:12 - Meaning and Application

Eliphaz, who had set out to persuade Job of the sin and folly of his discontent and impatience, now appeals to a vision he had once received. He tells Job about it to support his warning. Anything that comes straight from God naturally carries special weight, and Job would have respected that as much as anyone.

Some think Eliphaz had this vision very recently, after he came to Job, and that it supplied the words he used in argument. It would have been better if he had stayed with the main point of the vision. That vision could rightly support a rebuke of Job’s complaining, but not a charge that he was a hypocrite. Others think Eliphaz had it long before, since God often spoke to people in those early times through visions (Job 33:15).

Most likely, God sent this message to Eliphaz at some earlier time when he himself was unsettled and unhappy, in order to calm him. We should comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received (2 Corinthians 1:4). In the same way, we should try to correct others with truths that have first corrected us. At that time, God’s people did not yet have a written Bible to quote, so God sometimes made even common truths known through special revelation. We who have Bibles have, thank God, a more sure word to trust than visions and voices (2 Peter 1:19).

Notice first how this message came to Eliphaz and the setting in which he received it. It came to him secretly, or by stealth. Some of the sweetest fellowship godly people enjoy with God happens in secret, where only his eye can see. God has ways of bringing conviction, guidance, and comfort to his people without the world noticing, through private whispers as truly as through public preaching. “His secret” is with them (Psalm 25:14). Just as the evil spirit often steals good words out of the heart (Matthew 13:19), the Holy Spirit sometimes quietly plants good words in the heart before we are even aware of it.

He received only a little of it, as verse 12 says. Even the best people in this world receive only a little divine knowledge. We know very little compared with what remains to be known, and compared with what we shall know in heaven. “How little a whisper we hear of him” (Job 26:14). We know only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). Eliphaz shows humility and modesty here. He does not pretend to have understood everything, only something of it.

It came to him in a night vision (Job 4:13), when he had withdrawn from the world and its noise, and everything around him was still. The more we pull back from the world and its concerns, the more ready we are for fellowship with God. When we are alone with our thoughts and are still (Psalm 4:4), that is a fitting time for the Holy Spirit to speak to us. While others were asleep, Eliphaz was ready to receive this visit from heaven, and perhaps, like David, he was thinking about God in the night watches. In the middle of those good thoughts, this message came to him. We would hear more from God if we thought more about him. Yet some people are suddenly troubled by convictions in the night (Job 33:14-15).

The vision also came with terror. Fear came upon him, and trembling, so that before he heard or saw anything clearly, he was already shaken. His bones trembled, and perhaps even the bed beneath him shook. A holy fear of God and his majesty had taken hold of his spirit, and that prepared him for a divine message. God often humbles first the people he means to honor, and he calls all of us to serve him with reverent fear and to rejoice with trembling.

Next, notice the messenger. It was a spirit, one of the good angels, who serve not only in God’s providence, but sometimes as messengers of his word. About this appearance, Eliphaz is told several things. First, it was real, not just a dream or imagination. An image stood before his eyes. He saw it plainly. At first it moved back and forth before him, but at last it stood still and spoke. Some people have tried to fool others with false visions, and some have even fooled themselves, but that does not prove that true appearances of spirits, both good and evil, never happen.

Second, the vision was unclear and somewhat confusing. He could not make out its form well enough to form a clear picture of it in his mind, much less describe it. The purpose was not to satisfy curiosity, but to wake his conscience and give him understanding. We know little about spirits. We are not meant to know much about them now. In God’s time, we shall soon move into the world of spirits and know them better then.

Third, the sight filled him with deep fear, so that his hair stood on end. Since the fall of man, it has been frightening to receive a message directly from heaven, because sinners know they do not deserve good news from there. So even appearances of good spirits have often made a strong impression of fear, even on good people. How kind it is that God sends us his messages, not by spirits, but by people like ourselves, whose fear will not overwhelm us! Compare Daniel 7:28 and Daniel 10:8-9.

Then comes the message itself. Before it was spoken, there was silence, deep silence (Job 4:16). When we speak from God, or when we speak to God, we should do it with solemn care, as though setting limits around the mountain where God comes down. We should not rush into speech. The message was given in a still, quiet voice, and it was this: “Can a mortal man be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?”

Some think Eliphaz means to prove that Job’s heavy afflictions show he is surely wicked. A mere mortal would be seen as unjust and unclean if he punished a servant or subject like this, unless that person had committed some very serious crime. So, they say, if Job had not done great wrong, then man would be more just than God, and that cannot be true.

But I think Eliphaz is mainly rebuking Job’s complaining and discontent. Can a man really claim to be more just and pure than God, to understand fairness better, and to obey its rules more strictly, than God himself? Can weak, miserable man be so proud? Can even the strongest and most honored man, man at his best, compare with God or stand against him? It is deeply wicked and foolish to think that we, or anyone else, are more just and pure than God. Those who complain against God’s law, God’s grace, or God’s providence are setting themselves above him. Let such people answer for that.

What! A sinful man, and short-sighted too, should he claim to be more just or more pure than God, who made him and owns him? If he is like clay, can he argue with the potter? Whatever justice and purity there is in man comes from God, so God must be higher in both. See (Psalm 94:9, Psalm 94:10).

Eliphaz then turns to the angels. Some think what follows was spoken in a vision, but the point is the same. Angels are God’s servants, his ministers (Psalm 104:4), bright and blessed beings, yet God does not need them and is far above them. He does not place his trust in them as we trust people we cannot do without. He does no work that he must depend on them to do, and he never treats them as if they were part of his secret council (Matthew 24:36). His own eyes run through the earth and watch all things (2 Chronicles 16:9).

Some also take this to mean that even angelic nature is changeable, so God would not trust angels with their own safety unless he gave them special grace to keep them from falling. The point is that God sees weakness even in angels compared with himself. If the world were left to angels alone, they would make mistakes and would not always act for the best. They are wise, but still limited. So the meaning may be: God places no confidence in his holy ones, nor does he boast in his angels, as if their praise or service added anything to him. His glory is that he is perfectly blessed without them.

From there Eliphaz argues how much less man should be trusted or praised. If there is such a gap between God and angels, what a much greater gap there is between God and man. Man is shown here in all his weakness. In life, he is very small and fragile. Angels are pure spirits, but human souls live in houses of clay, which is the body. The body weighs the soul down like a cage or prison. It is a frail clay house, easily broken, a simple earthen vessel made by the potter’s hand.

Angels are fixed and secure, but man’s very foundation is in the dust. A clay house built on rock might stand, but a house founded in dust is bound to fall. Since man was made from the earth, he is also sustained by what comes from the earth. Take that away, and his body returns to dust. We stand on dust, some on a larger heap than others, but it is still dust beneath us, and dust will soon swallow us up. Angels are immortal, but man is soon crushed. His body is dissolved, and he dies and wastes away as easily as a moth is crushed between fingers. A small thing can end his life.

In death, man looks even less fit to be trusted. Men are mortal and dying. They are destroyed and perish as to this world, and their place knows them no more. They are also dying day by day, continually wasting away. Death keeps working in us. It is as if a grave were being dug little by little, and we are exposed to death all day long. Human life is short, perhaps only from morning to evening, as brief as a single day. Their beauty, strength, learning, wealth, and honor all vanish with them. None of these things can keep them from death, and none of them go down with them.

Their wisdom cannot save them either. They die without wisdom, either because they lack it or because they use it foolishly and ruin themselves. And this happens so often that people scarcely notice it. The deaths of others are common talk, but seldom a serious warning. Some understand this as also pointing to the eternal ruin of sinners. They are broken by death from morning to evening, and if they do not repent, they perish forever. Their ruin comes because they do not regard God or their duty, and they do not think about their end (Lamentations 1:9). They have no lasting excellence, and death strips away what little they had. If they do not lay hold on eternal life, they die the second death.

So shall such a weak, foolish, sinful, dying creature claim to be more just than God or more pure than his Maker? No. Instead of arguing with his afflictions, he should marvel that he is not in hell.